I think once again Jerry knee-jerked when finding the right players could have represented three additional wins and a play-off run.

Throw the baby out with the bath water comes to mind here.

I agree. But I was trying to find something positive with the move. It will be a LONG offseason. Usually I am pretty optimistic about our chances, but it is hard to remain optimistic this year.

I thought we would spend the offseason trying to find OL and possibly Spencer's replacement. Now we have to get new DL, new Safeties, OL and Spencer's replacement... How are we going to do that? We have no cap space?

If it were up to me, I would have give Rob another chance and focused on OL, but I am not the expert.

We didn't score more than 10 points one time in the 1st half this year. We played from behind something like 73% of the time, which I believe was third worst in the NFL.

Yards don't mean much, and were piled up in the 2nd half when we went to a hurry up because we were behind all the time.

We were 15th in scoring (which is average), largely because we accumulated points in the 4th quarter in a hurry up offense that had nothing to do with the game plan.

The offense was not very good, and we were consistently out game planned by opposing coaches. The offense was at least as big of a problem as the defense, and Jerry has pretty much said as much in interviews.

If you don't think they are discussing short comings of the offense and changes they need to make there, you have not been paying attention.

Interesting points. Probably the reason for so many of the turnovers as well. Players are under more pressure to make plays when the team is behind on the scoreboard.

One thing that stood out was the lack of imagination in the playbook. Teams have figured out the Dallas playbook, and there was very little scheming from week to week. The Seattle loss the second week after beating the Giants was shocking, given Dallas was playing against a rookie QB.

A lot of people are focused on how the 4-3 and zone will counter the skins and rg 3..... Our whole off season last year was about countering the giants... Our draft and FA signings were about matching the gnats receiving corps....
Eli has to be licking his chops at the thought of us playing zone coverage....

The really stupid thing about this is that posters here have been saying for YEARS that we need a space eating NT. Why didn't we ever get one of those? I have no idea.

Because Ratliff made the pro bowl at DT one year and didn't want to move and nobody had the stones to tell him he was moving to DE where he should have been playing all along. Therefore, they never viewed NT as a need high enough in the draft to get a real NT or in free agency. They kept going cheap looking for a complimentary player to Ratliff instead of a replacement. I never understood it. I don't pretend to know much about the X's and O's but even I could see Ratliff getting doubled and wearing down and there always seeming to be big holes right up the middle in the second halves of games. I always thought Ratliff and Ware coming around the same end would be a nightmare for opposing teams but I guess the team never thought so.

Another one is quite possibly the proliferation of the option being mixed in (or taking over as in Washinton's case) offensive game plans.

Monte Kiffin developed his version of the 4-3 at Nebraska to combat option offenses. Of course, that defense has been tweaked plenty of times since then --including when he and Dungy adjusted it in Tampa to battle the West Coast offenses.

It's going to be fine folks. Probably so grwoing pains with personnel adjustments and players learning a new, but simpler, scheme.